A couple of things to catch up on:
I’m not quite ready to do a full review on my new Cannonball Big Bell Stone Series tenor but early reports are really good. I would never want to do a full review without first playing it on the gig since for me nothing I do in the practice room is quite like the way I play live. I do have a big band gig this weekend and I have a couple of louder concerts later in the month so I will definitely have some opportunities to put it through it’s paces. I played it in a rehearsal for the big band this past weekend and I tried both necks – fat neck for the first have and the regular neck in the second half. I tend to like the fat neck better but my wife came to my room to listen and she instantly said she liked the regular neck better…we’ll see how this plays out.
I’ve also been playing on Rigotti Gold reeds for a couple months now and I really like them so far. The problem is I’ve only tried one box because of the way I break them in and my rotation system. I would definitely want to check a couple more boxes before being sure about a full review. I was playing Van Doren Java 3 1/2 and I switched to RG 3 1/2 M…so far I think that was the best choice…I got the comparison from a RG reed chart I think. One interesting effect of switching reeds is I’m now firmly back on my Phil-Tone Eclipse HR mouthpiece rather than the Phil Barone Super New York I had been playing for the last year or so.
On the EWI front, I just bought a new Refill from Chris Vollstadt at EWI Reason Sounds called Analog Dreams. I’ve been playing them for a few hours and I’m pretty happy with them so far. The entire Refill (for Propellerhead’s Reason) is comprised of some emulations of vintage synths and they’re all very tweakable. This Refill is also a new approach for Chris containing less sounds at a very reasonable price.
Finally, I just took delivery of a mouthpiece to try from Pete Thomas of “Taming the Saxophone”. It’s a new metal mouthpiece called the PPT he’s been working on and I received it as part of a passaround through Sax on the Web Forum. I’ve signed up for several passarounds in the past and this is the first time I actually got to play the mouthpiece in question…usually the passaround seems to fall apart I guess because someone buys the mouthpiece and that shuts everything down. Since this is a first I’m kind of excited to actually get to try something new and comment on it.
Look for these and other reviews along with some audio recordings in the near future.
